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Submission Synopsis
Points of Departure
by Edward McKeown
Book
Opening
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Length:
78,901
Genre:
Science Fiction
Series:
Was Once a Hero (complete)
Fearful Symmetry
From Which No Traveler Returns
Sentence:
Obsessed
Starship Captain Fenaday risks interstellar war to save his imprisoned wife,
but will his lover Shasti Rainhell doom his quest?
Blurb:
Robert Fenaday
must drive the starship Sidhe across uncharted space to rescue his
wife before war breaks out. But can he keep his command from mutiny
and his former lover Shasti Rainhell from murder as well?
Synopsis:
Points of Departure completes the trilogy of Robert Fenaday’s search for
his wife Lisa, and his companion and sometime lover Shasti Rainhell’s search
for her humanity. The trilogy is written so the reader can pick up any of
the books and have a complete SF adventure in hand, yet all three form the
overarching story of Robert’s quest and Shasti’s emotional voyage of self-discovery.
Robert Fenaday has survived monsters, rebellion on Olympia, and a fight to
death with Jalgren Pard, lord of assassins.
Now he had slipped control of the confederate spymaster Mandela, renewing
his quest to find his wife, Lt. Commander Lisa Fenaday. In the ruins of Pard’s
fortress, Fenaday’s friend, Telisan, has unearthed Pard’s plot to ally with
a new alien species that holds Lisa prisoner. Fenaday knows that his mission
could trigger a war with these new aliens, the Voit-Veru, but he is long past
caring. The weight that lies on his heart is a dual one. He had abandoned
the quest while Lisa languished as a prisoner, believing her dead. Worse,
he has fallen in love with another woman, Shasti Rainhell, the genetically
engineered assassin created by Pard.
As the star-frigate Sidhe plunges deep into unknown space, they must free
Lisa before the Voit-Veru learn that Pard has fallen and the Confederacy is
aware of their existence. Sidhe tiptoes through alien systems, a task made
harder by divisions within the ship. Fenaday’s guilt has driven he and Shasti
apart. Shasti is tormented, realizing that she loved Robert in the same moment
that she lost him. A voice whispers in her mind that if Lisa is found alive
she may not stay that way. No amount of wishing silences that voice. The cyborg
Mmok, Mandela’s watchdog, remains a threat and Telisan worries that he has
dragged his two fiancée’s, Sharla and Arpen into a suicide mission.
Sidhe captures a Voit-Veru freighter, forcing the crew to fly the ship to
the base where Lisa is held. Fenaday plans to nuke the port city and strike
out for the base at the same time Sidhe attacks, using Pard’s codes to start
a fight between the Voit-Veru and Olympian space forces. At first the plan
works but the enemy base proves too strong. Fenaday troops must flee even
as confusion engulfs the Olympian and Voit-Veru. Shasti is cut off and must
make her way alone.
In the chaos, Lisa Fenaday escapes, only to fall into Shasti’s hands. Shasti
must come to terms with love and jealously, or be the cause of a tragic end
to Fenaday’s quest. All that she is, all she has so painfully learned, all
she has become wars within her until she realizes that there is only one way
to express her love of Fenaday and that is to save Lisa. Dodging enemy patrols,
they try to catch up to the others.
While the rest of the force struggles to escape, Fenaday, half-mad with grief
and guilt, plans to stay behind until he can find Shasti and Lisa. The battle
above them is ending as the Olympians, their alliance broken, pull away from
the damaged Voit-Veru ships. Sidhe’s last shuttle, escorted by Telisan, is
heading in to pick them up. Shasti and Lisa walk out of the swamp to the joy
and astonishment of Fenaday and the rescuers. But the celebration is cut short
by an attack by Voit-Veru fighters and hovercraft. Telisan destroys the fighters
but is shot down and wounded. Mmok and his robots sacrifice themselves to
cover the retreat of Sidhe’s troops.
Overwhelmed by death and loss, Fenaday collapses, sanity hanging by a thread.
Lisa Fenaday takes command of Sidhe and escapes the Voit-Veru, only to run
headlong into a Confederate task force. Mandela has followed them. Sidhe is
targeted by the fleet’s weapons. But in that fleet are Ensharis, whose world
Fenaday saved. They will not stand by while Sidhe is destroyed. Lisa ends
the escalation by calling out, demanding Mandela speak to her and using his
real name, Avery Deveraux. She tells Mandela that she found the aliens he
sent her to spy on. Fenaday is enraged, threatening Mandela with murder but
again Lisa intervenes, telling him that she exceeded Mandela’s orders, went
too far and was captured. It is not his fault.
Watched by the Ensharis and facing Lisa, Mandela decides it is more politic
to endorse Fenaday’s action and pardon him, again, then blow him out of space.
He sends them away from the fallen system under escort.
One last confrontation remains to be fought. Lisa seeks Shasti out in her
cabin. What of Robert? Was mine, was yours and is whose now? Shasti tells
Lisa that she knows that Robert loves her first and foremost but that part
of his heart will always remain with Shasti. She wants them to be friends.
Lisa says that would be easier if Shasti was not so perfect. Shasti smiles
bitterly, “So far perfection has been hell.”
The next day Shasti is called to the bridge to find Robert and Lisa Fenaday
there, along with her other surviving friends. The Fenadays are returning
to New Eire to settle down and tell Shasti that there will always be a place
for her in their home. But more knowing that Shasti must have a place and
a life of her own, and in appreciation for saving both their lives, Fenaday
is giving her the Sidhe.
“My part in this ship’s story is over,” Fenaday says. “You must write her
story now.”
Shasti faces an almost limitless future filled with hope...for the very first
time in her life.
Bio:
I have enjoyed a life-long love affair with science fiction. I seek to
write believable people in extraordinary situations, balancing romance, humor,
adventure and reasonable extrapolations of science in stories that I believe
people will want to return to again and again. Whether it’s in the short stories
of my "Lair of the Lesbian Love Goddess series" or in the novel, Was Once
A Hero, an updating of the classic "Planet" tale, in which a crew of unlikely
companions find themselves facing unknown dangers while exploring an alien
world, my intent is to give the reader the sort of page turning, involving
adventure that Andre Norton wrote and leaven it with the emotional complexity
and ambiguity that C..J Cherryh brings to the field.
While the experiences of the SF universe are out of reach of those unable
to pay for a Russian rocket ride, I use experiences from my background to
try for an underlying verity in my characters. I've parachuted, flown in gliders
and hang gliders and strapped to the floor of military helicopters. I've been
rated as an expert shot and carry a black belt in the martial arts. I've been
paralyzed by fear, exhilarated by love, and walked into fights, both literal
and metaphorical, that I knew I could not win.
I have the great good fortune to be married to the talented artist Schelly
Keefer.
Endorsements:
Tim Mcloughlin. Editor of Brooklyn Noir and award-winning author of
Heart of the Old Country.
Film:
I write in a very visual style which will facilitate the book's metamorphosis
into film.
Additional:
I believe the combination of Robert Fenaday, the "everyman" James Bond
anti-hero, and the mysterious and beautiful Shasti Rainhell makes for one
of the best and most intriguing character combinations in years.
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